Camp Mingo Nirvana peek-show
northeast ohio end-all-dreamy-
thursday afternoons :
it is sunny as the Lord’s Day
& no kids play in the park
but me & a lean stray cat
who danced his paws on my stomach
& circled my calves 5 times
in ritual gesture of what I
was afeard of.
For two minutes the sweat shook me
like future heroes come back thru
comic-book-aerosol trees
to suck your breath
before you get to them
and become them.
I became what I am
whatever I am today in the sea
or yesterday in another sea
by keeping my head above water :
a painted JuGgLeR
keeping it all in the air
the air that is road
for the tones we give off
the notes we sing invisibly to another
or all others
or nobody
shall come back invisibly
in dream-ocean sleep
and sound their harpy guitars in
WAVE UPON
WAVE UPON
ENDLESS MOTION of future notes
with fraulein-hungry mermaid arms ringed
with circles of ringing alarm clocks
each afloat and waiting
for one lost dew drop
to wake up
and drop silently one with
future constellations and
the dropless one-time silent sea.
[/Poem]
Featured Painting: The Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) (1760-1849)
Psychotic dogs bark at cold winter stars,
chips of dead ice on the black painted canvas
of night. They sense the distance. The distance
between them and all other matter, the enormous
space between all living things: atoms, planets,
people, mountains, worms, moles, birds, gods, angels,
unspeakable stars burning in unknowable galaxies.
I hear the punition of bliss in endless, mindless meridian.
These passengers are always with me
On my journey down to the sea
Where sailboats list and bob endlessly by the quay.
I do not know them. They do not know me.
We ride together on melting roads each day.
Not speaking. Only sometimes to cry
Out warnings or exclaim aloud our dismay
At the mystery, the misery. Save us they seem to say.
I cannot save them and they
Cannot save me as we drive down broken highways
To reinvent the collapsing superstructure of our dreams.
Featured Print: Bridge Crossing by Linda Lyke Arroyo Images: Bridge Crossing is from a series of prints focused on the contradiction between the densely populated areas that surround the Arroyo and its pristine isolation, illustrating a fragmenting of nature and city.
On cracked ancient krater painted red, men black- bearded wrestle, hoist spear and penis or recline in drapery drinking wine from shallow cups
restating thus this vessel’s earthly purpose. Keats’ purple bubbles winking at the brim and yes they are all fixed in, forever slim forever holding the same positions;
and yes the maidens always loath, the runner always wins, the wrestlers frozen along the rim, the satyrs always priapic.
But what does it prove? That art is eternal? Immutable? Essential? Death in the end does not conquer, does not shatter?
A silver helmet found at the bottom of a river, beside rusted sword blades, dog and horse bones, human bones dung-flesh and blood ghosted away
centuries ago. A warrior, gore-hero buried here, strong-blood-and-death lover, ring-giver, sent to Odin with his weapons his torcs, his women, his slaves, his beasts
in a savage age not unlike our own : the age of Kali Yuga, the age we are trapped in like still figures on a painted vase.
And is this too Art? Is this the stuff mankind’s dust is son and father to? Shards in time, slime breaking down to slime.
Featured Print: Beothuk Memory by Linda Lyke Newfoundland Paintings: Beothuk Memory is from a series of paintings that convey the struggle for survival of the Beothuk Natives and European settlers of Newfoundland and memorializes the images of both cultures with their complex topography of land and sea.
The insubstantial beauty of smoke
lilting upwards from an unseen stack
on a clear winter morning,
lifts the heart as briefly as it rises,
and then fades away with the wind;
attacks the senses with acute demand
as sharp as battle lances brandished
centuries ago in long forgotten China,
where the Confucian texts of war
first were caricatured on slim sticks
of bamboo strung together with silk cords
that crumbled in time, leaving only
confused and jumbled accounts, full
of splintered wisdom about high ground,
bloodless coups, and counter counterspies.
The insubstantial beauty of a sunrise
as it clears the eastern horizon
spreading fingers of golden light
through bare boughs, across frosted roof
tops covering untold joys and sorrows :
nightmares and waking dreams,
forgotten the moment light pales through the window,
never to be recalled until the moment when death
calls, and all forgotten dreams are remembered.
The insubstantial beauty of morning’s river, placid and green, clear and clean, as though one could walk across its mirrored surface
to the other shore, where the night before
gold and red lights slashed the tide like knives
glittering out to the center, where dreamy boats
flow upstream pushed by the steamy breath
of river spirits, and river gods, who watch us
from the fourth dimension and shed frozen tears
over our ignorant sins, and our transient beauty.
They watch as children wake from fitful sleep
to see air-to-ground missiles explode all around them,
shattering roofs, and walls, and bodies, in their village
sending mushroom clouds of golden fire spiraling upwards
into the black mountain night, beautiful, beautiful
the sight of death who comes roaring down from above
from million dollar flying machines flown by deadly angels,
who are agents of the Dark Star disguised in Christ’s apparel.
The insubstantial beauty of life as it morphs into death,
that precise moment when the moth leaves the mouth
and flies to we know not where, to some other dimension
where other frightened children sing one eternal note of dismay,
where bands of white light hum in unison mantras of reckless joy,
forever flying above golden rivers, glowing from endless sunrise.
No rivers in China
Return to the sea
As once they did
Throughout millennia
Bringing tiny bits of mountains
To form sand on the ocean floor.
All rivers now are dammed.
Valleys flooded; cycles destroyed.
Ghosts of Wang Wei and Li Po weep.
Art and poetry vanishes with nature.
All for power. All for greed.
[/Poem]
Featured Painting: Landscape after Zhao Danian by Wang Jian (1598-1677)
